Cities

All eyes are on the big bang education reforms in Delhi

Delhi, 22 September 2016 — The Delhi government has unleashed a slew of fresh measures to reform education in the State; however, piecemeal strategy and failure to recruit enough teachers might undo the good work.See more.

All eyes are on the big bang education reforms in Delhi

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi, 22 September 2016

Of all the megacities in the world, Delhi is the most unusual in terms of its governance framework. In addition to being the national capital, Delhi is also a State, with an elected Chief Minister; yet, key functions like land use planning and policing and even bureaucratic appointments remain with the Centre. Of late, the tensions between the Chief Minister and the Lieutenant Governor, who represents the Union government, have flared considerably in Delhi and a recent High Court judgement that favoured the Centre has only added fuel to the raging fire.

Despite the battles, the Delhi government has made valiant efforts to focus on improving the public education system in the State, beginning boldly with allocating nearly 23 per cent of its budget to education in March this year. With an initial focus on infrastructure improvements like maintenance and construction of additional classrooms, the focus has now shifted to education quality.

In a landmark move, the government organised a parent-teacher meeting (PTM) on 30th of July in over 1000 government schools across the city. Besides giving an opportunity for parents to interact with those who teach their children, something that who send their children to private schools take for granted, the PTM was also a golden opportunity to create a buy-in among parents for the new model of education that the government is hoping to take forward. While critics dismiss it as hype, the PTM’s inordinate success can at least partially be attributed to the activation of defunct school management committees (SMCs) that are mandated by India’s Right to Education Act.

More substantive reforms that speak to education quality are also underway, sources in the government say. Chunauti 2018 (translation: Challenge 2018), an initiative to bring academically deficient students up to speed through additional support mechanisms, replaces the no detention policy widely criticized by educationists nationwide. Summer camps were held in 550 schools across the city this year, for instance. The aim is to equip students to take the Grade 10 school-leaving examination with some level of confidence. A number of organisations including Pratham, Jodo Gyan, Central Square Foundation and Creatnet Education have been roped in to improve learning outcomes and teaching quality in 54 ‘Model Schools’ and plans to train teachers and principals are also afoot.

Despite the commendable energy that the government has brought into education, turning the tide after decades of disrepair and neglect will be a gargantuan task. Experts on education are ambivalent about what these measures will yield and some steps are being viewed with skepticism. “Filling vacancies so that there are enough teachers in schools should be the top priority,” a senior researcher shared, adding that finding trained teachers to fill the 10,000 slots announced by the government will remain a serious challenge. Segregating children by ability under Chunauti 2018 has also been controversial, with child psychologists pointing to the possible adverse impacts of such a move on self-esteem. Curriculum reforms made unilaterally by the government have also not been well received by educationists and by the central examination board.

Overall, while the intent to improve education seems clear, the strategy appears piecemeal. Meanwhile, education has not been spared from the blows in the ongoing pow-wows between the two loci of power. The Lt. Governor took a dig at Delhi’s Education Minister and Deputy CM Manish Sisodia a few days ago, calling his foreign trip to study Finland’s education interventions a ‘vacation’, even as Sisodia tweeted about his meetings and site visits abroad. Amid the scuffle between those in power, hangs in balance the future of thousands of young people.

On community radio, music builds a shared space for the subaltern

Delhi, 16 August 2016 — Gurgaon, Delhi’s glitzy suburb, has been in the news lately for a gargantuan traffic jam triggered by faulty drainage and flooded roads during a heavy shower in the last week of July, unleashing a spate of fury over the city’s lack of planning and poor infrastructure. It’s not only the physical aspects like water supply, drainage and road design that was ignored, however, during Gurgaon’s exponential growth since the early ‘90s.See more.

On community radio, music builds a shared space for the subaltern

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi, 16 August 2016

Gurgaon, Delhi’s glitzy suburb, has been in the news lately for a gargantuan traffic jam triggered by faulty drainage and flooded roads during a heavy shower in the last week of July, unleashing a spate of fury over the city’s lack of planning and poor infrastructure. It’s not only the physical aspects like water supply, drainage and road design that was ignored, however, during Gurgaon’s exponential growth since the early ‘90s. There has been equally little attention paid to the social dynamics between the city’s diverse inhabitants: the villagers whose fields turned into a concrete jungle, the well-heeled and educated professionals who moved here to work in one of Gurgaon’s many Fortune 500 companies, and the illiterate rural migrants who comprise the city’s unorganised workforce. Despite their interdependence, these groups live in rather separate worlds in this city. Not enough thought is being given to what would happen when these worlds met.

In 2009, while the world was fooled by the upward mobility that financial investments had brought in, revelling in markers like shopping malls and private cars, the enthusiastic team of a newly launched community radio station in Gurgaon, brainstormed intensely on issues around identity. For Gurgaon ki Awaaz (GkA), the question ‘Who is the community?’ was central to positioning and propagating their work. And so, they took the bold decision of targeting only non-English speakers, both locals and migrants through their programming.

The mainstay of a radio channel is music and the pursuit of original music that would engage their target communities became an all-consuming roller coaster ride. Reminisces GkA founder Arti Jaiman, “Through word of mouth, we gathered inroads into the world of mandalis (troupes) that performed the ragini, a folk form popular in Haryana. Our team travelled to Kota Khandelwala, a small town that hosts a famous ragini competition annually to record music. We discovered a whole thriving world of music that we were barely aware of, a world patronised by local elites where the tradition of storytelling through folk music was still very much alive.”

Slowly but surely, as the sounds hit the airwaves, not just artists from Haryana but also those performing in other languages and dialects began to approach GkA for a chance to be on air. “We faced some backlash from Haryanvi listeners the first time we played Bhojpuri music,” Arti shares, “but we were determined to be as inclusive as possible.” Patiently telling each irate caller to bear with the channel and give a chance to something new because “the city belongs to everyone who lives here”, the channel’s young team realised that music could be used effectively to break ice, start conversations and sensitize communities about each others’ perspectives. Tweaking the programming and content to include explanations of the meanings of songs played in various dialects, for instance, made it possible for listeners from different parts of India to recognise common themes in each other’s music. Regardless of language and style, the troupes were singing songs of love, of longing and separation, of devotion, songs that accompanied the seasons and related to festivals; common themes were a subtle reminder of the underlying human bonds across Gurgaon’s fractured communities. For locals and migrants, whose interactions with each other as landlords and tenants are not characterized by much bonhomie, this community radio channel became a shared space where subaltern voices and cultures could be given free expression.

Even as the hard work since 2009 is starting to pay off, with listeners more empathetic and open-minded than before, GkA is constantly pushing the boundaries. Encouraging newer troupes that break away from purist forms and incorporate electronic sounds in their raginis is an example of how the channel strived to be “constantly disruptive”. Music was the low hanging fruit, opening the door to new mediums of expression like storytelling and poetry. “People are always looking for themselves in you,” Arti says, and this is what Gurgaon ki Awaz has enabled them to do through music and words.

Training and legal protection to strengthen unorganized workers

Delhi, 22 July 2016 — Sensitizing unorganized workers in garment factories in and around Delhi and offering them legal support is not enough to protect them from exploitative practices that deny them a living wage. An effort to reform the legal architecture and give it teeth is the need of the hour, discovers Delhi-based NGO Society of Labour and Development.See more.

Training and legal protection to strengthen unorganized workers

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi,22 July 2016

Delhi has been at the epicentre of a number of local and national movements to protect the livelihoods of informal sector and unorganized workers like street vendors, domestic workers and waste workers. At the same time, the voices of unorganized workers in the formal sector are barely heard in the debate around informal work.

The National Capital Region (NCR) is an important hub for the textile industry in India, which employs 35 million people nationwide and accounts for 12% of India’s GDP. The textile and clothing cluster in and around Delhi, along with Bangalore, Tirupur, Chennai and Jaipur, contributes 70% of India’s exports in this sector. A key cost saving strategy for garment factories is the employment of large numbers of informal sector workers through a chain of contractors, to whom they provide no employment guarantees or social security benefits. The issues faced by these unorganized workers within the formal sector are distinct from problems that informal sector workers experience.

In the garment factories of Gurgaon and Noida informal workers, mostly poor rural migrants from the northern Indian States of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, commonly face wage theft in various forms- under payment, delayed payments as well as non-payment of wages. Combined with malpractices like forced overtime, this means that workers barely earn a living wage. Further, multiple levels of subcontracting allow employers to be barely accountable in the eyes of the law. As Shikha Bhattacharjee from the Society of Labour and Development (SLD) puts it, “neoliberal deregulation is mapped on the bodies of workers”, for whom inadequate wages is not only an economic blow but also results in low calorific intake, exhaustion, sickness and poor medical care.

To make matters worse, in a clear violation of the Indian Constitution (which guarantees freedom of association), unorganized factory workers are not permitted to form collectives (see SLD report). Testimonies from NCR made at the National Peoples Tribunal on Living Wage for Garment Workers in Asia in 2012 reveal that a climate of fear is actively maintained in factories through frequent scolding and abusive language to prevent workers from raising their voices. Workers reported loss of work, death threats, violence and abuse to the Tribunal, of which SLD was a key organizer, as consequences of union involvement. Denying the ability to negotiate through formal channels leaves these informal workers vulnerable, legally and financially. One of the consequences, Shikha points out, is the fluid mobility of workers across workspaces, which further reduces the claims of migrant workers to the city space.

SLD works to intervene in two distinct ways. First, in collaboration with grassroots partners like the Mazdoor Ekta Manch, SLD focuses on raising the awareness of workers about their rights through trainings, workshops and public events. Workers are offered knowledge that saves them from exploitation, for example by understanding the consequence of signing on blank papers. They are also trained to construct evidence of employment by maintaining passbooks and saving documents like gate passes and pay slips. Second, SLD operates the Kanooni Salaha Kendra (KSK), a legal counselling cell that guides workers in cases related to wage disputes, violence, sexual harassment and civic rights. In many instances, detailed case files maintained by SLD lawyers have been useful in helping workers get legal resolution to labour disputes.

Through the Tribunal and the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), SLD is using international forums to demand living wages for Asian garment workers. In India, it is advocating legislation to license and register labour brokers, increased funding to strengthen the labor ministry and departments, enforce ILO inspection conventions, recognise and empower trade unions, timely revision of minimum wages and a move towards a more consultative framework to address labour issues. However, specific elements of the recently proposed 2015 Draft Labour Code on Wages that seeks to simplify labour law and create a pro-active climate for investment and industrial growth—like dismantling labour inspections, diminishing oversight from trade unions and undermining legal remedies for workers—do not bode well for the future of unorganized workers. A balanced resolution is the need of the hour to ensure the competitiveness of Indian industry is not built on the exploitation of informal labor.Close.

Offering concepts for a more inclusive Delhi: In the words of Gautam Bhan

Delhi, 9 June 2016 — Gautam Bhan teaches Urban Politics, Planning and Development at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore and has been an active part of urban social movements on sexuality as well as housing rights. His writing, research and practice look at the politics of poverty in contemporary urban India with a focus on urban displacement, access to affordable housing, and housing policy in India. Gautam speaks to Mukta Naik about how Delhi could have a more inclusive future, a topic addressed at length in his recently authored book "In the Public’s Interest: Citizenship, Evictions and Inequality in Contemporary Delhi" (Orient Blackswan, University of Georgia Press). See more.

Offering concepts for a more inclusive Delhi: In the words of Gautam Bhan

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi, 9 June 2016

In your recent book, you pose questions around inequality and persistence of poverty ‘from’ Delhi, not ‘of’ Delhi. Does each city then pose its own unique questions?

Place matters, particularly in the construction of what comes to be known as ‘urban theory.’ Right now, this is the sum of a series of particular inquiries asked from very particular places. Could we consider it as the sum of a series of particular inquires asked from different places?

Delhi has something to say about planning, law, inequality, slums, evictions, illegality, form, and citizenship. So do Sao Paulo, Cairo, Johannesburg and Dhaka. When these cities take the concepts as they emerge from here, do they have better a conceptual armory to understand their cities than the terms inherited from the industrial landscapes of the North? That’s what remains to be seen. That’s the conversation the book is a part of.

Do you believe it is possible for citizens to be serious stakeholders in the process of planning and reshaping Delhi? How?

I think citizens of Delhi are already serious stakeholders in planning and shaping the city – just not in formal, legible ways. I think the paucity lies in our ability to understand these different landscapes of “participation”: from patterns of (il)legal, unexpected use to public and organized resistance; from structural changes in democratic politics and formal representation to shifting landscapes of corruption; from the way the Metro has created new social and physical geographies of circulation and aesthetics to the brute symbolism of the Commonwealth Games – the list is endless. I think the city is at a saturation and excess of participation – it’s just not going to play by the rules of some formal process where participation is contained, bound by rules and made to behave. So the question is: at a time when the city is buzzing with dynamism – are we able to listen, read and support the ways in which citizens are shaping the processes of planning and re-shaping Delhi?

You point out that our understanding of urban issues are shaped by the contexts in the Global South. Yet in India, policymakers and city planners continue to borrow from the North when they seek solutions. How could this change?

There are two things at stake here: whether we have the right knowledge to offer, and whether we are offering it in ways that can translate into practice. I think both are significant challenges. If we don’t want our policymakers to use concepts from the North, we must ask – what are the concepts we are offering in their place?

This is why I think the creation of new and more appropriate frameworks is so important. I want to understand informality not because I have a theoretical bone to pick, but so that we can then figure modes of practice, ways of moving forward. So, again, from our cities, we can ask: If you practice in a city that is auto-constructed, that was built outside planning, then how do you plan? If the concept of “regulation” loses its familiar meanings because your public institutions have no history of enforcement, how do you try and intervene into a land market, an urban form, an economic assemblage, a city? Where are the courses on retrofit and repair in our architectural colleges or the courses on post-facto planning in our planning departments? What is “network” or “trunk” infrastructure in a city already built and running on a patchwork of decentralized provisions with a range of legalities? How do you imagine economic development if informality is not a transitionary stage in “modernization” but a medium-term condition? What is a politics of urban welfare that is not premised on labor as a foundational pillar of citizenship? What is neoliberalism if a state never provided for it to then “withdraw?” We have to also offer ways of moving forward that are provisional, not silver bullet; incremental, not all-knowing. Both these tasks lie before us.

What measures could Delhi take to include its under-provided citizens?

The first is that Delhi, because of its city-state like nature and its history of public land ownership, has the ability to regulate its land markets more than other cities. Leveraging public land can alter the economic, spatial and financial landscape of this city and tilt towards more equitable outcomes in housing, employment, public space and even environmental services. Yet within the current political economy of value, a serious political shift in thinking has to be fought for us to move in this direction.

The second, because I work most closely in housing, is to take seriously the realities of our housing crisis. The simple fact is this: the only affordable housing built at scale by any actor in our city is the housing auto-constructed by communities and people. This housing, however, is often structurally inadequate (though it, incrementally, usually grows to standard), and is marked by insecure tenure. Two decades of evictions have shown precisely how insecure such de facto tenure regimes are. Yet our policy approach is to build its way out of this mess, with the magical 25 square meter flat as the mass produced silver bullet. Nothing suggests that we can do this. Nothing suggests that we should – that this new vertical housing will be desired, viable, sustainable or, even at its most basic, occupied. Reversing our policy approach in housing to lessen the time it takes for incremental housing to become secure and adequate, and building on what people have already built through upgrading and universal service provision, is the only way forward. The longer we take to realize it, the more likely that another generation will inherit the vulnerabilities of their parents rather than the fruits of their lifetime of labor.

Last, Delhi must take seriously the need to construct a true urban welfare regime. This means both scaling rights and entitlements to the city and delivering them locally. The resources exist to do this, the mechanisms are less clearly understood and the political will is still fragile, though it is improving. Structuring this regime means expanding existing rights in education and food to health, shelter, and water. It also means taking seriously the way spatial illegality makes most city residents ineligible for rights – if you cant exist on paper legally either through employment or housing, you cannot effectively claim entitlements. Therefore, spatial illegality and economic informality combine in the auto-constructed city to de facto exclude claims to rights even when de jure rights exist. Innovations in delivery must follow the expansion of entitlements – Delhi has the ability to lead here, to expand welfare without waiting for the nation as we have done in much of Indian history has done.Close.

How technology improved water access for Delhi’s poor

Delhi, 12 May 2016 — While India’s new urban policies glorify the smart city, the Delhi government has been working steadily since 2011 to use technology to provide water to underserviced areas in a transparent, efficient manner. The experience underscores that smart solutions can be about leveraging public and private sector capacities to provide citywide fixes to targeted problems. See more.

How technology improved water access for Delhi’s poor

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi, 12 May 2016

The Government of India’s (GoI) Smart Cities Mission has mainstreamed the idea of using technology innovations to leapfrog urban governance targets. Despite the policy’s focus on inclusion and participation, the competitive funding smart city projects seems sidelined underserved communities, which often remain off the priority list. In Delhi, there is reservation about New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), one of Delhi’s most elite areas, being selected among the first 20 smart cities to receive GoI funding.

The majority of Delhi’s population (about 60%) lives in a baffling array of informal settlements, commonly called bastis, where insecure tenure and poor access to services is a reality. In the absence of piped water supply basti residents, usually women, spend a fair amount of their day waiting for the water tanker to arrive. If and when it does, they jostle with each other to collect enough water for their families. In the dry summer months, this is a fight for survival. Fortunately, the Delhi government has used technology to make simple and incremental improvements to water supply over the last five years or so.

Communities identified three pressing concerns over tanker supplied water—first, poor quality; second, leakages in the system owing to poor tanker maintenance but also, reportedly, because the private sector water mafia can siphon off from government run tankers; and third, concerns around equitable access, where and when will the tanker appear and who will control these decisions.

In response to the most pressing leakage problems, the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) awarded a seven-year contract in June 2011to the Delhi Integrated Multi Modal Transit System Ltd (DIMTS) to implement a solution. The Centre for Policy Research’s detailed analysis of the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) describes how by 2013, the utility had introduced new stainless steel water tankers fitted with GPS trackers. DJB engineers could now track tankers from the point of filling right till the point of distribution. Tanker operators were issued smart cards that ensured that potable, treated water was being filled into the tankers and sensors fitted inside the tankers reported chlorine levels.

The strategy was to improve water access by focusing on transparency of information. A public monitoring interface in the form of a website that provides exhaustive information on tanker schedules, where tankers will be parked for distribution, arrival and departure times, filling point, contacts in case of delay or failed delivery and vehicle number has greatly improved transparency and access. Additionally, mobile-based complaint registrations were put in place in 2014, and by mid-2015, customers were empowered to track water tanker locations via their mobile devices.

Delhi’s water tanker experience is a great example of technology being used for efficient and equitable delivery of urban services, though relying heavily on web- and mobile-based tools when reaching out to less-educated and low-income populations may hinder its effectiveness. The initiative successfully leveraged the capacities of the government (GNCTD and DJB) and quasi-private entity DIMTS to respond with a citywide solution. In a city where a relatively well-serviced area is slated to get the ‘smart city’ tag under the new smart cities scheme, it is prudent to remember that smart is not necessarily new and fancy, but merely logical.Close.

Delhi, 12 April 2016 — When the car-free Sunday movement started on a small stretch of a well- frequented road in Gurgaon on 17 November 2013, citizens and authorities regarded it as a fun urban experiment. Wonder turned to incredulity as Raahgiri remained popular. Crowds kept turning out, on cycles, skateboards, with running shoes on, in dance gear, to paint and sing, to meet friends and discuss politics, to enjoy the outdoors and partake of a community life they realised had been completely missing—all of them, of course, leaving their cars home.See more.

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi, 12 April 2016

When the car-free Sunday movement started on a small stretch of a well- frequented road in Gurgaon on 17 November 2013, citizens and authorities regarded it as a fun urban experiment. Wonder turned to incredulity as Raahgiri remained popular. Crowds kept turning out, on cycles, skateboards, with running shoes on, in dance gear, to paint and sing, to meet friends and discuss politics, to enjoy the outdoors and partake of a community life they realised had been completely missing—all of them, of course, leaving their cars home.

Gurgaon was just a beginning. The car free streets movement inspired by Bogota’s ‘Ciclovia’, became larger when Raahgiri Foundation tied up with the New Delhi Municipal Corporation to replicate the effort in Connaught Place, the central business district of the world’s largest city in July 2014. From Gurgaon to Delhi, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Bhopal and Karnal, Raahgiri is a growing movement. EMBARQ India, the sustainable mobility arm of the World Resources Institute, is the driving force behind setting in motion this positive chain of events. Despite the overwhelming success of Raahgiri as an event property, one does wonder whether the movement has the potential to translate into something bigger so that our cities can aspire to become more sustainable.

Taking a step back, we find that the motivations for a car free day were born out of more than just the desire to achieve pollution-free and less car dependent cities. In founding Raahgiri, EMBARQ India was partnered by Heritage School; I am Gurgaon, an NGO that was already known for its commendable work with turning a mining site into an urban forest, the Aravalli Biodiversity Park; recreational sports league organiser Duplays, cycling enthusiasts’ group Pedal Yatri; and Haryana Police. These organisations were driven by a larger vision, one that involved healthy lifestyles, safe public spaces, an integration of nature into the city and social inclusion. Importantly, they saw the citizen as an agent of change. And so, Raahgiri was aimed at altering the discourse, from expecting the government to provide a sustainable and safe urban environment to citizens and governments co-creating that ideal city.

The tremendous turnouts at Delhi’s Raahgiri, approximately 10,000 people every Sunday, is being seen as a resounding support for non-motorised transportation and active lifestyles. Surveys conducted by EMBARQ to assess Raahgiri’s impact show 66% respondents reporting owning a bicycle after experiencing cycling on Raahgiri Day and 10% reporting a switch from using cars to cycling or walking to cover shorter distances to the nearby market or park.

Raahgiri has also begun to change opinions of shopowners and traders in the area who had been fiercely opposed to the idea of pedestrianizing the inner circle of Connaught Place for years, fearing a drop in business. Some 71 percent of the shop owners interviewed reported an increase in business on Raahgiri Day as compared to the remaining days of the week.

Largely attended by families and groups of friends or hobbyists, Raahgiri’s role in bringing diverse people together in a single urban space is unquestionable. It has also fostered a positive feeling towards the municipal government and the police, giving them a people-friendly image and gaining them trust.

Amit Bhatt of WRI believes that movements like Raahgiri create the bottom up pressure to demand long-term changes. “Raahgiri is proof of concept that streets are public spaces and if designed well they can catalyse an urban transformation. In Delhi, what used to be dead space comes alive on Sundays. It’s now time for authorities to take the next step and pedestrianize Connaught Place’s inner circle 24 X 7,” he says. Only time will tell us if initiatives like Raahgiri will translate into a larger awareness and further demand for sustainable mobility options. For now, parallel to Raahgiri, a prioritizing of increased investments in public transportation and non-motorised transportation is underway. Close.

Mobile app Safetipin bets on big data to push for women’s safety

Delhi, 10 March 2016 — In Delhi, parents insist that their daughters return home before sunset. Fear of sexual abuse is very real in this city. In a 2010 survey by NGO Jagori, nearly two out of three women reported facing sexual harassment between 2-5 times in the past year; and three out of five women reported that they were sexually harassed not just after dark but in the daytime as well. Verbal, visual, and physical forms of abuse, including rape, are not uncommon in Delhi. See more.

Mobile app Safetipin bets on big data to push for women’s safety

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi, 10 March 2016

In Delhi, parents insist that their daughters return home before sunset. Fear of sexual abuse is very real in this city. In a 2010 survey by NGO Jagori, nearly two out of three women reported facing sexual harassment between 2-5 times in the past year; and three out of five women reported that they were sexually harassed not just after dark but in the daytime as well. Verbal, visual, and physical forms of abuse, including rape, are not uncommon in Delhi.

The words 'accessibility' and 'livability,' therefore, mean nothing to Delhi’s women unless they feel safe. Women’s groups and NGOs have, for many years, worked to support the government through interventions like gender sensitization training for the police and support to communities and victims in reporting sexual crimes. The focus had been firmly on policing, but there was another critical aspect that needed urgent attention.

The Jagori survey pointed out, vitally, that while the burden of staying safe fell almost entirely on women, resulting in restrictions upon their behavior and movement, the major causes for lack of safety are "poor infrastructure (including poor or absent streetlights), unusable pavements, lack of public toilets, and open usage of drugs and alcohol." Intervening to improve urban infrastructure emerged as a clear imperative; one that was taken up by researcher and Jagori Executive Committee member Kalpana Viswanath in partnership with entrepreneur and technology expert Ashish Basu. Together, they created Safetipin , a map-based mobile phone app that crowd sources data from users and trained auditors to enable cities to become safer. Input from users about what they see or feel are quantified through specific indicators like lighting, visibility, people density, security, transportation, existence of walk paths, and gender diversity and coalesce into safety auditsand safety scores for hundred of ‘pins’ or locations across the city.

For a woman in Delhi, the app provides critical information about the safety of particular locations with red, orange, and green pins on the map clearly highlighting levels of danger. "The Safety Score is useful for anyone stepping out for a meal at night, visiting a new city or renting a place to stay," says co-founder Kalpana Viswanath. "It can help all of us, specially women, make better choices and be better prepared."

In addition to providing safety information, Safetipin is visualized as a means to gather big data that will inform urban stakeholders like the police, urban planning departments, and policymakers in their endeavors to improve safety conditions. "Equally, Safetpin is intended to support communities to make demands on the State for improved, accessible, and inclusive public spaces," Kalpana adds. For example, a pilot test across 8 Indian cities shows that feeling safe was most highly correlated with the presence of people and gender diversity in public spaces followed by lighting and visibility. In comparison, the presence of security arrangements did not correlate as much with women feeling safe.

Already, Safetipin data has been used to suggest improvements in last mile connectivity of the Delhi Metro and to highlight gaps in infrastructure and services in Delhi’s historic core Shahjahabad, among other projects. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Public Works Department are leveraging this data to improve lighting in different parts of the city. Going forward, continuous and large-scale collection of data through crowd-sourced safety audits will be able to closely inform planning and design towards safer cities.

In a country where the availability of reliable granular data is often the stumbling block for better planning, Safetipin’s open access data platform can be a powerful tool to re-imagine our cities and make them safer, especially for women. Encouragingly, a number of stakeholders expressed willingness to engage creatively and collaboratively with the data at a workshop organised by the Safetipin titled ‘Using Data to Build Safer Cities’ in February 2016. Given the current policy emphasis on smart cities and use of big data, Safetipin could well be the right solution at the right time. Close.

Delhi, 16 February 2016 — In neighbourhoods across Delhi last week, elected representatives held public meetings to seek citizen feedback on a recent policy experiment that regulated the use of private cars in the city. Similar consultations were a key strategy used by AAP to formulate their election manifesto for the State elections last year. See more.

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi, 16 February 2016

In neighbourhoods across Delhi in early February, elected representatives held public meetings to seek citizen feedback on a recent policy experiment that regulated the use of private cars in the city. Similar consultations were a key strategy used by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to formulate their election manifesto for the state elections last year. Combined with online platforms, feedback at public meetings is currently used by the state government’s Public Grievances Monitoring Cell to inform everyday governance decisions, says AAP’s Neeraj Kumar, who coordinates the cell.

The mohalla sabha (neighbourhood meeting) is deeply embedded in the DNA of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Delhi’s reigning political establishment that has a history of bottom-up activism around several issues, held together by two linchpins—transparent governance and zero-corruption. In the foreword to his book titled Swaraj ("Self-rule," a term used widely by Gandhi and others during India’s freedom struggle from colonial rule in the early 20th century), Arvind Kejriwal, party leader and current Chief Minister of Delhi, writes: "...people’s role in a democracy is not merely voting once in every five years. They have to participate in governance. Power centers have to move from Delhi and other state capitals to villages and communities."

The most ambitious use of mohalla sabhas, however, has undoubtedly been the government’s experiments with participatory budgeting. Soon after it's electoral win in February 2015, in the searing summer months, the AAP government held a slew of public meetings to pilot participatory budgeting in 11 constituencies of Delhi. The INR 40 million (USD 580,000) fund (of which a fourth is paid out to the water utility Delhi Jal Board) was hitherto managed by the MLA, who is the elected representative to the state government. In a bold move, the participatory budgeting model placed this money in a discretionary fund spent based on citizens' priorities decided via public meetings.

Addressing a conference on citizenship held by think tank the Center for Policy Research (CPR) in August 2015, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said, "Public money will be spent as per the wishes of the people. They will not have to go to the MLA or even the councillor for basic amenities and infrastructure." Public records indicate that the money is being spent on a range of improvements, including water supply, drainage, public libraries, dispensaries, security fencing and beautification, with substantial differences in priorities across constituencies.

It is early to bring out a report card on Delhi's participatory budgeting experiment, which is yet to achieve scale. Its full implementation is hampered by the failure of the government to bring into force the Swaraj Bill, a piece of legislation that formalizes the concept of participatory governance through the mechanism of the over 3,000 mohalla sabhas in the state. The bill envisages 69 "indicative functions" to be performed by neighborhood-level ward committees that would be democratically appointed at the mohalla level. It grants the committees administrative and financial approvals and even the power to recall elected representatives.

In the interim, the government is seeking ways to strengthen the institution of mohalla sabhas. "We are looking to build more sensitization and increase preparedness among citizens, government employees who deliver services, as well as elected representatives to be able to smoothly implement participatory budgeting. But a solid beginning has been made," says Neeraj. The AAP government completed its first year in power on Valentine’s Day; in year two, expectations will soar and all eyes will be on the success of its participatory budgeting strategies. The government would do well to put metrics in place to monitor progress and demonstrate success in this critical "proof of concept" stage.Close.

In peri-urban Delhi, experiments with decentralized sanitation

Delhi, 14 January 2016 — Water and sanitation in urban areas are clear priority themes for Habitat III. Ayanagar, an informal settlement on the outer edge of Delhi, has been the site of experiments that validate four key elements of a way forward in these areas – community self-organization and persistent local initiative, professional expertise, political will and sound government policy. See more.

In peri-urban Delhi, experiments with decentralized sanitation

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi, 14 January 2016

Ayanagar sits at Delhi’s southern edge, past the farmhouses of the rich and famous and overlooking the lush green Aravalli range. An urban village that has exploded in size through the illegal plotting of agricultural and forest land, Ayanagar is a teeming and dense settlement of over 100,000 people, comprising local villagers and poor migrants from all over rural India. Affordable and well-located but sadly deficient in infrastructure, Ayanagar typifies the nature of Delhi’s peri-urban sprawl.

Dilapidated Ayanagar is now the subject of keen interest for the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD). It is one of six sites where decentralized sewage treatment is being tried by the government through the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) and the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB) for the first time. The provisioning of basic services like water and sewerage through trunk pipeline infrastructure to unauthorized plotted settlements in peri-urban locations has been a huge challenge to the DJB. While tankers have been an interim solution for water supply, sewerage has been a total disaster across Delhi’s informal settlements. Open sewers are the norm and homeowners have adopted septic tanks, which require regular cleaning, on a mass scale. The government is all too aware of the grave repercussions of poorly constructed septic tanks on groundwater quality and health.

When the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) came to power in early 2015, addressing issues related to service provisioning in Delhi’s informal settlements, where over 60% of the city’s population and most of AAP’s vote bank lives, was a clear priority. The search for appropriate solutions, particularly for decentralized sanitation, began in earnest. A technical solution presented itself in the form of the Bio-Digestor , evolved and patented by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO); however, the government was hesitant to move forward without implementing partners with robust community links.

Ayanagar’s choice as a pilot site stems from its rich experience with community self-organization over the last 15 years, from being declared a "model village" by former Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in 1999 to residents registering a wholly democratic organization, the Aya Nagar Vikas Samiti, to make development plans in 2001. By 2008, with the help of NGO Greha , which was located within the settlement, residents co-created a plan for sustainable urban renewal. The scheme included a detailed topographical survey and technical plans for decentralized sanitation in the settlement. Says architect and Greha co-founder MN Ashish Ganju, "Despite being illegal, ordinary people in Ayanagar built the city by joining together, liaising with government authorities and elected representatives, and persuading local authorities to upgrade urban infrastructure. Without infrastructure, especially sewage, this is not a city fit to live in."

When MLA Kartar Singh Tanwar, Ayanagar’s elected representative to the State Legislative Assembly brought this rich history to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s notice, Ayanagar became a priority area to pilot decentralized sewage solutions. Greha, which has a long association with the community, has been the natural choice to take this forward.

Housing and slum upgrading as well as water and sanitation in urban areas are clear priority themes for Habitat III. Further, India’s fulfilment of SDG6 and SDG11 related to water and sanitation and inclusive, safe, and resilient cities is imperative for global success, given the widespread problem of open defecation and urban sanitation failure in the country. The experience of Ayanagar, which demonstrates the equal importance of four elements – community self-organization and persistent local initiative, professional expertise, political will and sound government policy – certainly shows the way forward. Close.

Delhi's informal waste recyclers reduce ill effects of climate change

Delhi, 21 December 2015 — Instead of being victims, what if the urban poor were to become the frontrunners of solutions to combat the ill effects of climate change? What if they could become change agents for improving the quality of life for, not just themselves, but all urban residents? This is exactly the reversal of roles NGO Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group has explored through its support to informal sector waste-recyclers in Delhi. See more.

Delhi's informal waste recyclers reduce ill effects of climate change

Mukta Naik, Delhi Community Manager

Delhi, 21 December 2015

In India, cities produce staggering amounts of waste—Delhi alone needs to deal with over 9200 metric tonnes of solid waste a year—and spend anywhere between 10-50 percent of their municipal budgets managing it. Much of this waste ends up in landfills that emit greenhouse gases over years to come and waste-to-energy plants that are more often than not, inefficient and polluting. Instead, Delhi would benefit substantially from waste management strategies that focus on recycling and composting. In fact, effective waste management is a key element in India’s strategy of reducing carbon emissions while keeping economic growth on track, a delicate balancing act that has dominated climate talks starting with the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and carrying onto the recently concluded COP21 discussions in Paris.

This is where informal sector waste recyclers come in. Delhi has over 100,000 waste workers who collect, sort, and transport waste free of cost with the objective of recovering and selling recyclable materials. A study Chintan conducted in 2009 found that the recycling efforts of Delhi’s informal waste workers reduced emissions by an estimated 962,133 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. That’s like taking 176,215 passenger vehicles off the road, a particularly evocative comparison at a time when Delhi is struggling with a crisis in terms of air quality and resultant conditions of poor health among its citizens.

These savings come at no cost to the government, yet the system doesn’t formally recognize or credit informal sector recyclers who are unable to improve efficiencies and capacities, or increase their potential to earn. Chintan recognized this and as early as in 2002, began to work with a Delhi-based collective of waste recyclers that comprised waste pickers, doorstep waste collectors, small buyers, small junk dealers, and other types of recyclers. With Chintan’s support, this collective of about 12,000 adult workers was registered by the name Safai Sena or an Army of Cleaners in 2009. Safai Sena has worked hard for informal waste workers to be acknowledged as important urban actors by the state, and members dream of upgrading their work to respectable, safe, and recognized “green” jobs. A similar process of extensive research and cooperation resulted in the creation of 4R, an association of electronic waste recyclers.

Besides being an effective advocacy partner of informal waste recyclers, Chintan’s close involvement with policymaking has resulted in a few important wins. For instance, new e-waste legislation in Delhi, the E-Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 2011, provides for local kabaris to handle e-waste if they formalize through an association or company and take requisite permissions. A 10-30 percent gain in the incomes of wastepickers trained in dealing with e-waste has been an added benefit.

Global recognition for this powerful narrative of arresting climate change through empowering the informal sector to handle e-waste came at COP21 in Paris, where 35-year old wastepicker Mohammad Khokhan Hamid of Safai Sena received the UN Climate Solutions Award, and Chintan bagged the 2015 United Nations Momentum for Change Award in the Urban Poor category. “Over the past four years, we have diverted 25 tonnes of electronic waste for recycling instead of going straight into the landfills,” said Chitra Mukherjee, Head of Programmes at Chintan as she accepted the award in Paris, even as she emphasized the need for consumption patterns to shift from new to recycled products. The momentum of policy advocacy and participatory change created by organizations like Safai Sena and Chintan must continue if the world is to achieve its sustainability targets. Close.